Free Aaaiiieee by Jeffrey Thomas

since Kelly had started here. Had Mrs. Weekes, too, passed away, then? With a guilty twinge, Kelly realized she was relieved at the possibility. She turned out of the room and began walking briskly down the hall to search out her supervisor so as to inquire into just what had transpired. She was in such a hurry, in fact, that she bumped elbows with a woman who was walking down the hallway in the opposite direction. It was a nurse with her winter coat on, no doubt a third shifter like herself on her way home, but Kelly couldn’t tell who it was because of the dark glasses the pretty young woman wore.
    “I’m so sorry,” Kelly apologized for their partial collision.
    “That’s quite all right, my dear,” the young woman said in a pleasant British accent, and then she walked smartly down the hall and turned a corner. Kelly stood there watching her until the young woman was out of sight. For several minutes she couldn’t move, as if she herself had suddenly become catatonic.

Psychometric Idol
    It wasn’t until a plastic replica was cast, perfect right down to the clasped plate in the ponderous skull—and a computer-generated imaging system that would reconstruct his flesh from every angle was installed—that the Museum of the London Hospital Medical College surrendered and sold the skeletal remains of John Merrick to the pop star Ricky Concertina.
    Ricky was photographed at the opening of the new displays he had funded at the museum—was shown studying Merrick’s meticulous replica of St. Philip’s Church with an expression of reverence. But he was also photographed later with the gnarled, listing skeleton he had purchased, his arm slung around those jagged shoulders and a grin glittering from below his immense dark glasses.
    Ricky’s museum, to which the skeleton was to be consigned, was not open to the public.
    *     *     *
    Jimmy Tassone hated high-top sneakers, but not only were they the brand Ricky sponsored and always wore, they didn’t scuff or scratch the marble floors of Ricky’s house or the heavy glass sheets of the conference room floor. Jimmy glanced down at the lions, black leopards and white tigers in their respective pens under the three glass floor sections as he squeaked across them on his way to the table. A leopard lifted its glossy night-black face to him and snarled silently. Jimmy expected one of these glass sections to slide back one day when he was summoned, and he wouldn’t realize it until he had tumbled in.
    Ricky was not alone. Ricky was never alone. To his right at the head of the table stood the towering, inscrutable Strappado. To his left: the short, overweight, affable—and more frightening to those who knew him—Bastinado. At one side of the long gothic table, seated on a high-backed bench, was the psychometrist, Kolosimo.
    “Well?” breathed Ricky, before Jimmy had even reached the table. Ricky seldom spoke above this airy whisper, but Jimmy had learned well to listen sharply for it. Ricky didn’t like to talk; liked even less to repeat.
    “I have it,” Jimmy announced. He halted at the far end of the table until Ricky raised his arm languidly, inviting him to approach.
    To give Jimmy room, Strappado took a few steps back. Leaning over Ricky’s shoulder, Jimmy spread the cloth he’d kept folded in his pocket. He had removed it slowly from his pocket, so as not to alarm the looming Strappado.
    In the center of the cloth, a human eye gazed up at Ricky with a glassy expression. It was the newest acquisition: the last prosthetic eye used by the popular entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.
    A tight smile formed on Ricky’s face. It was tight due to the extensive plastic surgery Ricky had employed over the years to further sculpt his ethnic Italian features into a delicate and glamorous amalgamation. To Jimmy’s thinking, in his attempt to incorporate all the characteristics deemed desirable by the public, Ricky had transformed his countenance into something utterly alien.